Eurocrats work horizontally to make every European digital

Neelie Kroes hails Digital Agenda progress

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EU commissioner Neelie Kroes told Cebit yesterday Europe's vast bureaucracy was well on the way to fulfilling the digital agenda it set itself nine months ago.

In fact, Brussels was "working horizontally" to push the agenda, with Eurocrats getting horizontal with government bodies, innovators and anyone else that can help build up the EU's skills base.

Kroes was addressing an audience at Cebit, which has the Cloud as its over-arching theme this year. This slots in nicely with the seven pillar play to make sure ICT "plays an important role in European recovery" and accomplish the goal of "every European Digital".

In case you missed it, the seven pillars of the plan are: digital single market; interoperability and standards; trust and security; very fast internet; research and innovation; enhancing e-skills; and ICT for social challenges.

By well on the way, Kroes meant that the EU had accomplished ten per cent of the actions it had set itself, and on track with the rest. Except for the ten per cent that are delayed.

"We are working hard to get the delayed actions back on track and deliver as soon as possible," she said. Sadly, however, she didn't detail exactly which actions were delayed. Hopefully that info should come in May, when the Commission delivers its first Digital Agenda Scorecard.

This will be followed by a Digital Agenda Assembly on 16 and 17 June, which will feature "two large plenary sessions" to connect the digital agenda with the current and future EU presidencies.

However, she did say she was "particularly delighted that the proportion of the population regularly using the internet has increased by five per cent in a single year to 65 per cent". Curiously, the proportion of non-users has decreased from 30 per cent to 26 per cent. ®